Your brand is in the midst of a huge controversy sparked by security concerns over one of its most attractive features. That&rsquo;s a good enough reason for your customers to shy away from your products. So what else can you do apart from trying to convince the government against banning the service? Ask Research in Motion(RIM), makers of Blackberry phones.

Blackberry goes from men to boys

Business Standard

Global search giant Google will begin offering pay-per-view content for its US viewers by this year end, but Indian users might have to wait for a while. However, there is something in the offing &mdash; Google is gearing up its premium content aggregation in India.

Google aims for premium content

Anirudh Singh Bhati, a 24-year-old law graduate from Ahmedabad, who started editing pages on Wikipedia in 2006 as a hobby, had little idea that he will be one of the executive council members of Wikimedia Foundation&rsquo;s India Chapter.

Wikimedia adds India chapter

It&rsquo;s 6 pm on a Friday evening and the Gurgaon office of Doosan Heavy Industries &amp; Construction (DHIC) is mostly empty, but for the conference room where a Hindi class is in progress. Five senior South Korean managers of this Seoul-based MNC, sit around the table as the teacher takes them through the basics of spoken Hindi &mdash; Aapka naam kya hai?, Aap kahan se aaye hain? and so on.

Feeling at home

Award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer Goutam Ghose is back with his twelfth film, a joint production between India and Bangladesh.

In top gere

Of all India&rsquo;s traits, there cannot be one more fascinating than its tendency to harness everything to serve the interests of religion. Technology is pounced upon with alacrity, gadgets are pressed into the service of gods and faith &mdash; there are e-prayer packages, live darshans streaming into millions of households through rudimentary surveillance cameras, and temple trusts manage fairly complex transactions over the Internet.

Yours faithfully

The latest Karan Johar production, We Are Family, arrived at the theatres with a resounding thud. Directed by protege Siddharth Malhotra, this adaptation of the Hollywood weepie Stepmom, had all the signature KJo ingredients: big-name stars, over-the-top melodrama, and the de rigeur international setting. The last drew the ire of both journalists and fans alike. &ldquo;By Indianising Karan Johar doesn&rsquo;t intend to place the plot in India. The producer can&rsquo;t get over the NRI fixation and this time stations his story in Australia,&rdquo; grumbled the reviewer in The Economic Times. The average fan ranting online was less kind.

We are always an NRI family

Hamish McDonald wrote The Polyester Prince in 1998, on the rise of Dhirubhai Ambani. Legal threats kept it out of the Indian market &mdash; but now there is a sequel.

Ambani, Season 2

Photographer Margaret Bourke-White was on hand during the independence movement and Partition to capture an era of this country&rsquo;s history.

A lifer's tryst with India

The most obvious change to the i10 is that it&rsquo;s been given a facelift. The Hyundai corporate grille seems force-fitted at the front while the tail-lamps are larger.

Refresher courses

From a private art collection to a bike ride along Hudson river to the best of the city&rsquo;s famed comedy clubs, this is the New Yorker&rsquo;s New York.

New York, minus the tourist traps

I plan to upgrade to a sedan from my present Maruti Suzuki Swift diesel. I like the Fiat Linea diesel, but it is underpowered.

Linear thinking

There are two points on the Scoville Scale you don&rsquo;t want to know about: the point where the pain caused by eating a chili pepper will make a human being pass out, and the point where the damage would be serious enough to warrant hospitalisation. I&rsquo;ve hit one of those, with the infamous Bhut Jolokia from Nagaland; and I&rsquo;d rather not find out what the other pain point is like.

From here to Infinity

There&rsquo;s much more to Korean food than kimchi.

The Seoul food guide

Raj Rewal combines traditional and modernist in his architecture, and does it more effectively than most, says Himanshu Burte.

Power patterns

From street level and outside the Parliament House complex, not much of the Parliament Library building is visible to passersby. This is deliberate, because nothing should overshadow the legislature. To see the library building, one has to enter the complex.

The parliament library

As the din of Dahi Handi Janamashtami &mdash; when youths form human pyramids to break suspended vessels of Krishna&rsquo;s favourite, curd &mdash; rises in Mumbai, Ganeshas of every size parade across Chowpatty beach. Tall 10-headed Ravanas in pink and purple finery and hooped skirts brandish swords at cheering crowds on maidans, while the streets of Old Delhi turn into a place of gastronomic delight with the break of Ramzan. The rhythmic claps and percussion of the dandiya in Ahmedabad resonate in the conch-blowing at Kolkata&rsquo;s Durga Puja pandals. It all culminates in the coloured patterns and sparkles of Diwali that bring the night sky down to earth.

Beyond the gods

Do our schools confuse teaching with learning? Do they overlook real achievements in favour of a process? Abha Adams puts forward some thoughts from the other side.

Should we do away with formal schooling?

This season of flu and dengue spells doctors and medicines.

Simple food choices to boost immunity

It&rsquo;s been ten years since I made a trip to the US. The last time, in 2000, I was happily bewildered when they gave me a ten-year multiple entry visa despite the fact that I hadn&rsquo;t grovelled, foamed at the mouth, nor indeed even asked. Yay, I thought, now I can go over whenever I like, for ten years! No more providing years&rsquo; worth of income tax returns and months&rsquo; worth of bank statements! No more feeling, in front of the visa officer, like a waste of space with a shady past despite having a spotless record with no instances of being jailed! I blew a year&rsquo;s worth of my pitiful salary on that holiday &mdash; and of course never went again, on account of never having any money.

Born again in the USA

No, says Jaideep Ghosh. They only add to the woes of Indian sport.

Do we need a sports ministry?

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